infryq

This past week off work has been full of much-needed rest! I’ve been on a pattern of doing something semi productive in the morning or early afternoon, then playing Factory Town or napping until dinner. Although lbr it’s mostly Factory Town. Very sticky.

Wednesday we went to the coop and got baking ingredients and some fresh vegetables. A lemon, an orange, bell pepper, green beans, rice flour, sorghum flour, almond meal, brown sugar, candied ginger, coconut oil, vegan butter, hazelnut milk, and coconut-almond creamer.

Thursday I had a cavity filled.

Friday I made a gf flour blend from the rice and sorghum flours and corn starch, then made pie crust.

Saturday I made mince pies and attempted Canadian butter tarts. The orange and lemon peel went into the mince finely shredded, plus some of the juice, diced candied ginger, a pile of spices, toasted pecans, and the dregs of the bottle of wild ferment cider we’d been working through. Simmered until gloppy. Lined muffin tins with pastry, ran out of dough, made more. Filled and baked. Used the rest of the pastry to line mini muffin tins. Made butter tart batter with gf roux instead of the egg, and half brown sugar half maple syrup. The batter is ridiculously delicious so I’m a bit miffed I overbaked them into sortof toffee tarts instead, still edible but I want to try again. The mince pies are 💯, and I froze most of them so anxietybrain doesn’t freak out about their moist contents.

Sunday I washed my hair and did laundry, and clicked buttons to help N fix the survey machinery for work.

Monday I rescued some of the botched intermediate survey results from Sunday, and documented the process for N to complete. I took down the hem in P’s wool pants, which have shrunk by over two inches in the wash over time. I may decide to put the rest of the yardage through a warm cycle before making another pair. Anyway he tried them on to mark a new hem and they were still borderline too short, so I added a band of fabric to the bottoms. I made a new leather thimble (the other I’d made too small) for the finishing work.

Today I plan to complete the new hems and make paper snowflakes.

Over the weekend I wrapped gifts for my folks and packed everything into boxes for P to ship today. Flipped the mattress, did most of the laundry, and started playing Factory Town, a really cute game on Steam about logistics. It’s pretty sticky though so I’ll have to be careful about play time. I ordered nuts and fruit for the holidays from a new place in Texas; we’ll see if they’re any good. P is now researching nut cracking equipment as most of these places offer interesting varietals but only in-shell.

Yesterday we went on a small adventure looking for COVID self-tests, but came up empty. P has been hitting a low fever in the evenings, and in combination with the respiratory stuff we’d been assuming was asthma Bright on by allergies, it’s making him understandably nervous. He’ll go into campus Monday for a test instead.

I made another batch of crispy roasted fava beans, with pretty great results. This time I was pressed for attention, so I just brought the pot to a boil, slapped the lid on and stashed it in the turned-off oven with the door closed. By the time I came back it had cooled to 170F or so but everything was perfectly tender. I’ll have to repeat the experiment to get the timing right, otherwise wow, easy. They roasted for maybe 45 minutes at 425, then I backed off to 200 for hours until I gave up; another 15 minutes at 325 did the trick.

Did the laundry and hung it out on the line. Washed my hair, which is now long enough to be a whole production I only do twice a week. Had a cinnamon roll for snack, and otherwise sat and read fanfic with the windows open and a strong breeze. Dinner, scrabble (337, bingo RESEALING), internet, sleep. Dreamt of darning with fine wool yarns, carpool caravans, conductive textile logic gates.

Yesterday we went to a picnic for my research group! It was the first time I’d met almost everybody in person, held at a gorgeous event area at one of the new loft spaces on the south side. Mostly outdoors, well-ventilated, high-ceilinged indoors, and all the adults were of course vaccinated because epidemiologists don’t mess around. A bunch of the Fellows were able to make it and it was grand to get a chance to catch up. C and R brought their dogs and I got some quality happy animal time. R took some candid photos and one posed. R made an informal speech based on a mildly patriarchal quote which I then modified to my favorite “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, bring people with you”; very in-character for our dynamic. Had a lovely time and left before getting overwhelmed.

Spent the next couple hours decompressing with a delightful perspective-bending game called Gorogoa and texting with A. Did the normal weekly laundry and hung it out on the line. Had a snack, watched more Expanse. Dinner, brought in the clothes, crossword, finished Gorogoa, snack, sleep. Dreamt of preparing for some kind of research competition a la science olympiad but for grad students; chocolate; pro-level hide and seek; peeking through the keyholes in the doors on the second floor of my grandparents’ house.

Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got peaches, apricots, blueberries, melomacarona, mushrooms, eggplant, beans, broccolini, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, and onions. After lunch we did the crossword, and we did the laundry and hung it out on the line. I worked on some mending and started reading Dangerous To Know by KT Davies, an irreverent bit of roguelike D&D theater with eclectic cultural heritage. The villains are pretty tinny but the two main characters have substantial depth. Snack, Expanse, dinner, pulled in the clothes, scrabble (604, scored 66 with JERKED), more Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of art school problem-solving, a complicated leaf table, offering crash space, and some kind of game with a weird cooking mechanic.

Yesterday I slept way in, which was dearly needed. I did the laundry and we hung it out on the line, then I attempted to bake the remaining moisture out of the batch of roasted butter beans I made and froze last weekend. Alas, it made them all inedibly hard instead. I popped them in a food processor to try and make crackers, but while the resulting texture was okay, the flavor had too much briny funk to it for me to reasonably eat them as snacks. Nuts.

We did the crossword after lunch, scrabble after dinner (635, 1 bingo, terrible vowel distribution). I finished The Sugared Game, and started Paladin’s Grace by T Kingfisher. My audiobook app of choice didn’t have any more of the KJ Charles series, which sucks. The reader for the Kingfisher is a bit stiff but there are glimmers of flow, so I expect they’ll relax into it in time. In the meantime there’s 1.1x.

Yesterday I did the laundry and hung it out on the line. P and I shelled and split the lima beans, and I made the broken ones into beans and greens after a turn through the garden. I tore out the last of the snap peas, and we’ll see if that helps the lima beans sprout with more sun and water available. After lunch we did the crossword, then I spent a sleepy afternoon on the internet. Dinner, brought in the laundry, scrabble (624), Pose, snack, sleep. Dreamt of metro trains, swim team, miniature villages, roof and tunnel hacking, computer repair, human pyramids, auto translators, an agriculture conference.

Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, asparagus, rhubarb, broccoli, hard cider, brioche hotdog rolls, melomacarona, mushrooms, cilantro, lettuce, spinach, and strawberries. Lunch, then I made the strawberries and rhubarb into glop, had a meeting with my high school mentee, and started the lima beans par-cooking. Crossword, tossed the limas with oil, and set them to roasting. Went out to the garden and picked the rest of the snow peas, and cut the vines down to make room for the new pole beans. I picked and cut down the rest of half the snap peas as well, on the south edge. The other half are still going quite strong and aren’t too much in the way of anything so I left them. I planted lima beans, Mexican sour gherkins, picking cucumbers, and hyssop, and watered everything in. I came back in and stirred the limas, reduced the heat, and made a snack. Wiped off, then snacked over internet while the limas finished roasting.

The storm moved in after that, and it was a big one — the gusts shook the house, and one of the old casements left open downstairs slammed shut and shattered itself all over the front porch and yard. We covered it with plastic for now. The rain was so heavy at times I couldn’t see across the street, and there was some scary hail maybe half an inch in diameter. We lost power a couple of times, but nothing persistent.

The storm had largely passed before it was time for dinner. We ate, then played scrabble (741!, 1 bingo), then more internet and sleep.

Also for anyone picking up KJ Charles on my recommendation (I see you on goodreads)— they are excellent but also intensely, and with great enthusiasm, sexually explicit. Fair warning? Audible did find a terrific reader for them though, not everybody can voice-act scenes like that.

Discovery continues beautifully, with better communication than I remember. There’s still stuff they should be telling each other, but it’s largely stuff they avoid telling themselves, so that’s less itchy than it would otherwise be.

Yesterday I made another batch of roasted beans, this time split butter beans that I’d soaked then frozen and thawed. Fifteen minutes at 190-200F with plenty of salt and a touch of washing soda, turmeric, and coriander, then roasted at 425 until dry and starting to brown, then 325 until evenly golden and crisp. These are much smaller than the split favas but so far no hard ones.

Crossword after lunch, then I put in an order for more split fava beans, a couple different kinds of large whole dry beans I’ll need to soak, hull, and split myself, a selection of popcorn, a block of tamarind, and barberries, which I’ve been aching to try ever since we started watching Persian cooking videos a couple years ago.

I went out to the garden and picked a whole mess of snow peas, and watered everyone since it had been a hot day. The pole beans are coming up, but no sign of the squash or herbs yet. The snap peas are starting to fruit.

Dinner, scrabble (653), internet, snack, sleep. Dreamt of programming language pedagogy, PDL hijinks, B visiting and being aloof and recording songs, 3-legged races in heels, drafting jodhpurs for horses with too many legs.

I finished An Unnatural Vice and started An Unsuitable Heir.

Yesterday P came with me to campus to power cycle the machine under my desk. It was constantly filling the terminal screen with notices about full disks and trying to write to read-only volumes, and wouldn’t take any keyboard input. On reboot, there was no record of any such thing in any of the logs, and all the local disks had plenty of space, so, ydifkjcxsrskghgibbbt. 👻 I guess. Home, lunch, put the laundry in, crossword, then started patch runs of the surveys pipeline. Ordered a clothes experiment for summer: lightweight merino tees. Went out to the garden and ripped out most of the arugula so I could plant squash, beans, nasturtiums, borage, cilantro, basil, carrots, and a pollinator mix. I have new gardening gloves that go nearly up to my elbow and they are fantastic for ripping out cleavers too.

Inside, hung the clothes out on the line, made and ate snack, watched more Discovery of Witches. Late dinner, scrabble (650s, no bingos, but we did build DEFUSING which was quite satisfying), direct to sleep. Dreamt of accidentally and unwearably shrinking all my favorite summer clothes, largely because dream-me had sewn them (1) without prewashing the fabric first and (2) on the cross grain. In real life I shrink the snot out of everything first, even wools and silks, so I’m not sure what that’s about.

Finished Jackdaw, which is incredibly sweet and soft if you need a gay criminals-to-innkeepers story in your life (and who doesn’t). Started reading Rag And Bone, the last I have from this series.